This past month, as part of our ongoing efforts to make New York a greener, healthier city, the Council passed into law several groundbreaking bills that will help preserve and protect the environment, improve the quality of our air and water,and keep New York City at the forefront of environmental policy and action. These new, far-reaching initiatives include:
ELECTRONIC RECYCLING - Helping to protect the environment and keep litter off City streets, the Council passed trailblazing legislation last week to require manufacturers to take responsibility for collecting and recycling the electronic products that they produce.
Countless New Yorkers have an old television or computer cluttering up a corner of their home, but just don't know how to dispose of it safely. This legislation will provide us a safe, convenient way to recycle this electronic waste without having to have it landfilled or incinerated, which can often release toxic chemicals into our air or water. And as an added bonus, it puts the responsibility for recycling on the manufacturer, preventing further burden on consumers or on taxpayer dollars.
Under this landmark bill, New York will be the first city in the nation with an electronics-recycling law. Furthermore, this legislation includes key collection standards for manufacturers, making it one of the most comprehensive electronics-collection laws in the U.S.
GREEN FERRIES - Helping to improve air quality in and around New York City's waterfronts, the Council also passed legislation last week to require City-owned ferries to use low sulfur-emission fuel, as well as technology to reduce fuel exhaust pollutants from being released into the air.
With more than a million new people projected to live here by 2030, we need to take advantage of every opportunity to make our City more sustainable. Retrofitting our ferry fleet to use ultra-low-sulfur diesel is a simple and obvious way to reduce New York City's carbon footprint and help make sure our air is cleaner and safer for our and future generations of New Yorkers.
This legislation, which builds on the Council's diesel emission reduction efforts, will bring our ferries in line with the clean-air innovations we've already brought to our buses, taxis, sanitation trucks, and other City government fleet vehicles. In passing this bill, the City has demonstrated that it's serious about reducing emissions, improving air quality, and ensuring that our ferries are among the greenest in the nation.
STORMWATER MANAGEMENT PLAN - And lastly, helping to protect the quality of the City's waterways and prevent flooding due to rain storms, the Council passed a landmark bill last month to require the City to develop and implement a sustainable stormwater management plan.
New Yorkers are all too familiar with the flooding and damage that can occur as a result of severe weather. In addition to disrupting subway service and wreaking havoc on our communities and homes, heavy rain can also cause the City's sewage system to overflow with raw sewage, endangering public heath, causing ecological damage, and making local water bodies unsafe for recreational activities.
Under this new bill, the City will develop green roofs, permeable pavement, rain gardens and other green technologies to control flooding and sewer overflows at their source. Once in place, these technologies will greatly improve the quality of the City's water bodies, protect public health, prevent flooding on City streets, and make the City's waterways safer and more enjoyable for all New Yorkers.
February 20, 2008
Latest Environmental News from the NYC Council
February 4, 2008
Story of Stuff and the next generation
Two years ago I happened upon a media photo of a half dozen pre-teen girls on a park bench all reading the latest celebrity photo magazines and looking like wanna-be celebutantes. I was truly alarmed as I imagined them judging the mismanaged, consumption-intense lives of these rich and famous people. A 20-minute video to be shown at our circle this month — the Story of Stuff (released Dec. 2007 online by Free Range Studios, written by Annie Leonard) — is a welcome sign of providing resources to young people (as well as the rest of us). And I like that it focuses attention on the connections between environmental and social issues, in addition to looking upstream at the true costs of our consumption. Making connections between consumerism and other areas that are affected helps demonstrate the benefits of voluntary simplicity, as well as urgency to turn these trends around.
One review underscored the premise for the Story of Stuff—that our economy rests on the artificial creation of need. In our circle, we have discussed the difference between need and want, and the questions we have asked of ourselves:
- How many of my needs are really wants?
- Think of a recent purchase that I didn’t really need. Why did I buy it? What was I feeling at the time?
- Living more simply saves us money, improves our health, frees up more time, enhances our personal relationships, and benefits the ecosystems of the planet. Why isn’t everyone doing it?
In Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL), voluntary simplicity focuses on financial integrity and step 2 is about tracking your life energy, so that your own values are part of the costs. Although the Story of Stuff sounds to be a bit more like Jim Merkel’s Radical Simplicity, which builds on YMOYL and works toward understanding the environmental footprint of our consumer choices.
Another radio interview I heard recently with political theorist Benjamin R. Barber (the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland) also links this consumer push to the corruption of capitalism (ideally based on meeting needs) with a society that creates “needs” and seeks to turn children into aggressive consumers and adults into an “ethos of induced childishness.” He links this corruption and also increased privatization to the undoing of democracy. His book (from last year, released next month in paperback) is titled Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.
It reminds me of the work of sociologist Juliet Schor, a Boston College professor of sociology and author of the book, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture. The Nation.com ran an article, 20 Dec 2004, saying: “On culture, it's not ‘god, guns and gays’ the Democrats should address but the quality-of-life issues that cross the red-blue divide--excessive working hours, loss of community, commercialized childhood and rampant materialism.” Noted by Amazon.com reviews by Publishers Weekly: “According to consumerism and economics expert Schor (The Overspent American), the average 10-year-old has memorized about 400 brands and the average kindergartner can identify some 300 logos.”
My father taught me store loyalty (which I still appreciate) more than brand loyalty. He always made the effort to look for the smaller, local merchants so that they could survive and be there for him. I’m very concerned for the next generation, raised in an accelerated consumer environment with even fewer connections to the world around them, whether social or just natural.
"The Story of Stuff" is the focus of this month's voluntary simplicity circle
The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.It can also be downloaded here, if you are interested in watching it but can't come to the meeting. The screening will be followed by a discussion, (materials can be found here).
I won't be able to make it because I will be in Washington DC, but many many thanks to Mark for setting this up!
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